Plant Habitat is a fully automated facility that will be used to conduct plant bioscience research on the ISS. The space environment is stressful for all living organisms. Understanding how plants respond will help crews on future missions successfully grow plants for food and oxygen generation. The Plant Habitat-1 investigation compares differences in genetics, metabolism, photosynthesis, and gravity sensing between plants grown in space and on Earth. This investigation is expected to provide key insights on major changes occurring in plants exposed to microgravity.

Life Support Rack (LSR): Power and data umbilical cables, as well as fluid and waste gas umbilicals were mated in preparation for LSR activation in November. LSR is a European Space Agency technology demonstrator for closed loop air revitalization. It captures carbon dioxide from cabin air and recovers 50% of its oxygen for use by the astronauts. LSR operates for a minimum of one year on the ISS to demonstrate the robustness of the technology for future Exploration Missions

NanoRacks Platform: Platforms 1 and 2 were relocated from Express Rack 4 to the new Express Rack 10B. Cables were re-mated and the Platforms were powered up. NanoRacks Platforms is a multipurpose research facility on board the ISS. NanoRacks Platforms supports NanoRacks Modules in the CubeSat form factor by providing power and data transfer capabilities to operate investigations in microgravity.

POSSUM (Payload On-orbit Still Shorts for Utilization and Maintenance) Payload Photo: The crew took high quality still photos of ISS rack locations in the USOS Lab, Columbus, and JEM modules for use on the ground to train astronauts with ISS topography. The POSSUM photo project is a training tool that has the ISS crew take onboard photographs of completed Express rack and experiment installations. These photos are sent to the ground and printed into actual life size marquees that are used for ISS astronaut training and familiarization.

Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) Li-Ion Battery Data Logging: Today the crew terminated an Autocycle for two EMU Long Life Batteries (LLB) and initiated the Autocycle on two additional batteries. Today's initiated Autocycle will be terminated on October 23, leaving all 4 LLBs in a nominal, discharged state. Over the course of three days, the auto cycle will capture battery health data and help ground experts understand the charge and discharge capacities of these new and improved LLBs. The data will also be used to compare charging system performance between the on-orbit and ground based systems.